Should you make the leap forward into uncertainty or go back to what you understand?

We humans find ways to live through circumstances that defy our expectations—especially extreme disappointments. How we get through, grow through, or crawl through those events varies. Our rituals, regardless of what we call them, are designed to help us either get through those times or avoid them as best we can. We can’t offer an explanation as to why life can be so controversial at times.

There aren’t enough apologies to go around because some of us suffer in silence. In fact, there aren’t enough letters in the alphabet to assign blame. But hurt and disappointment have tremendous energy if we let them take us to the edge by actually feeling the hurt, pain, sadness or disappointment and then living through them.

The edge is an interesting place, sort of like a purgatory for those that are stuck between their search for tomorrow and their connection to rumors of a dirty past. Some folks remain in this space until they give up on life because of the pain and isolation that they experience while in this state. As tight as this space is, the edge is a place that’s populated by lots of people. Standing on the edge of the cliff of reason, should you make the leap forward into uncertainty or go back to what you understand?

Joseph Campbell described this event as a private ritual and a personal threshold that each of us must cross. Every space in our lives has an edge. Anytime we are ready for more, we have to be willing to take that next step when the time comes. Life is full of thresholds and dark nights of the soul where we pray to a transcendent being that doesn’t seem to be anywhere around.

On the edge is where you find that none of your spiritual, philosophical or emotional tricks work. The only way out is through.

A year ago I hit my personal edge. In hindsight I know that I had been there, standing at the edge of my personal cliff for much longer. When I was preparing to turn a major curve in my life, for some reason I started looking for my father. He was never around and I still can’t figure out why I felt compelled to find him. Both my father and stepfather weren’t around at all—ever.

When they were around, things were beyond problematic. Tragically enough, trying to find mentors since my career took off, only lead to amassing a ton of numbers for folks I wouldn’t tell my dog to have a heart-to-heart conversation with. It was hard enough fighting to get to 27 without any normal, stable, male influences, but at some point I personally hoped that I would become smart enough to fix this area of my life. Every man needs a father right? I can’t tell you why my personality, my zodiac sign of Cancer, my chakra system, or my soul feels I was one of those kids that needed to have his father around, but I was.

Someone suggested to me that maybe I’m crossing the threshold of manhood since I’ll be 30 soon. Everything I’ve acquired to this point have been things that my ego wanted since I was a kid. Part of that may be true, but an explanation doesn’t fix my problem.

As a 27-year-old husband, father, teacher, spiritual researcher and writer, I walk around with a hole in my soul that shouldn’t be there.

Fatherlessness is a terrible problem in our country and in my ethnic community. The irony is that the older I am becoming, the more it’s beginning to affect me.

At times, the loneliness is painful, the anger burns, and I wish the males that changed my mother’s last name could school me on family, life, marriage, stability, career, and misfortune. But I realized that the only way to get past my personal emptiness is to live through it. It’s normal when fear grips you and you’re scared as hell of what might happen next in your life.

What makes this place even scarier is what people might think when they find out that you’re in “that” place. It can be messy and, yes, it can feel as if people don’t understand what you’re dealing with. But that’s okay—the only thing that matters is that you make it past this. Rumi said that he lived on the lip of insanity wanting to know reasons and when he knocked on the door, it opened when he realized that something deeper was pulling him from the inside.

Human beings have tremendous strength and capacity but how strong we are cannot be seen until we make it past your personal “edge.” When we reach the edge, we’ll be faced with two steps we can take.

One of them will take us back to what we’re used to and the other will send us off the cliff. If we go backwards, at some point we will have to deal with this edge again, but if we step off of it, we will never have to see the edge of that particular cliff again.

And we will all be that much stronger because of our willingness to move forward.

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Editorial Assistant: Kim Haas/Editor: Bryonie Wise

Photo credit: epSos.de on Flickr